Archive for November, 2007

I couldn’t get the picture to copy from the Signals’ catalog site, so here you go with the hopes that you can read it. I think that there should be one that changes out the word “novel” and makes it “blog.” Don’t you?

I remember at a resort a couple of years ago someone letting out an “uh oh” when they found out I was a writer, as he, she or someone close by had just told a wonderfully juicy story of love, loss and raunchy movie making.

I stopped wanting to wear T-shirts with sayings like this on them a while ago (though the “Runs with Scissors” one still appeals to me), but I thought it might give you all a laugh.

(This has been around but is a must-read for anyone who hasn’t seen it yet — taken from a viral e-mail I received a while back with my thanks to Victoria for sharing it.)

The next time you are having a bad day, think of this and chuckle.

Subject: Bad Day At Work

Hi Sue, Just another note from your bottom-dwelling brother.

Last week I had a bad day at the office. I know you’ve been feeling down lately at work, so I thought I would share my dilemma with you to make you realize it’s not so bad after all. Before I can tell you what happened to me, I first, must bore you with a few technicalities of my job.

As you know, my office lies at the bottom of the sea. I wear a suit to the office. It’s a wetsuit. This time of year the water is quite cool. So what we do to keep warm is this: We have a diesel powered industrial water heater. This $20,000 piece of equipment sucks the water out of the sea. It heats it to a delightful temperature. It then pumps it down to the diver through a garden hose, which is taped to the air hose.

Now this sounds like a darn good plan, and I’ve used it several times with no complaints.. What I do, when I get to the bottom and start working, is take the hose and stuff it down the back of my wetsuit. This floods my whole suit with warm water. It’s like working in a Jacuzzi.

Everything was going well until all of a sudden, my butt started to itch. So, of course, I scratched it. This only made things worse. Within a few seconds my butt started to burn I pulled the hose out from my back, but the damage was done. In agony I realized what had happened.

The hot water machine had sucked up a jellyfish and pumped it into my suit. Now, since I don’t have any hair on my back, the jellyfish couldn’t stick to it. However, the crack of my butt was not as fortunate. When I scratched what I thought was an itch, I was actually grinding the jellyfish into the crack of my butt.

I informed the dive supervisor of my dilemma over the communicator. His instructions were unclear due to the fact that he, along with five other divers, were all laughing hysterically. Needless to say I aborted the dive.

I was instructed to make three agonizing in-water decompression stops totaling thirty-five minutes before I could reach the surface to begin my chamber dry decompression. When I arrived at the surface, I was wearing nothing but my brass helmet.

As I climbed out of the water, the medic, with tears of laughter running down his face, handed me a tube of cream and told me to rub it on my butt as soon as I got in the chamber The cream put the fire out, but I couldn’t poop for two days because my butt was swollen shut.

So, next time you’re having a bad day at work think about how much worse it would be if you had a jellyfish shoved up your butt.

With one tiny exception or two: 1) No one who has warm blood pumping through their veins can help but be entranced by the Angelina Jolie scenes — she is absolutely stunning, and 2) the message of being careful what you choose was not lost on me.

That being said (the part about seriously regretting that I ever agreed to go and see this movie), there were some really good moments and nice lines, so you may not want to write it off based on my opinion, unless you can’t STAND watching other people play slasher video games. If that’s the case for you, spend your movie money elsewhere.

The sad thing is that this movie could have TOTALLY been redeemed — a true case of movie tragedy, folks. TRAGEDY, I tell you. What I wouldn’t have given to have seen them in REAL FREAKING LIFE instead of animated characters stumbling around like a bunch of fantasy people in Shrek.

Honestly. Does anyone over 30 who isn’t going to run out and buy the Beowulf video game think that this was a good movie?

In the tank with all the green water that I can’t seem to manage to get clean, especially after he took out my plecostomus after offing Little Fish. He’s like the Goldfish Godfather.

Note to fish: “If you’re going to eat everything in the tank, you’re going to have to go in the bucket. I don’t like putting you in the bucket. You’re too small for the bucket. Don’t make me put you in the bucket. Just be nice, would ya?”

Author’s note: I wrote this a while back trying to put down some of what I was going through that has since been resolved. I post it here so that you all can come in to my world a little deeper and realize that for all the love that Jon and I share, it’s nowhere near perfect, and not only is it not easy, sometimes it’s damn hard. We all have our paths. I believe that now more than ever. When we begin these journeys, I am convinced that if we knew where they would take us, many of us wouldn’t have the courage to begin, including me. But thank God for that ignorance. Without it, hundreds of thousands of good things never would have come about. I believe that, too.

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There are times in life when if we knew where the road would take us or had the faith to trust our friends that we wouldn’t end up in the messes we create. This is not one of those times.

A little over a year ago, Jon thoughtfully purchased an aquarium for me on my birthday because my poor fish was swimming around in a bucket for half the month. (I’d change the water in the fishbowl and put him into the bucket for safekeeping and then leave him there, because, hell, isn’t that just easier? It’s more water than was in his fishbowl, I rationalized. I do that. I’m a justifier.)

So I put Mr. Fish (whose name escapes me at the moment) in the tank and look! There he is swimming around. I think he was happy in his new digs, but I also thought he must be horribly lonely — more of my own particular brand and blend of crazy coming out.

So I bought more fish.

Looking at this photo, I am shocked! Were they ever that small? The guy at the pet store warned me not to put four fish in a 7-gallon tank, but do you think that he could have told me that was because the bottom one was going to grow to be the size of a potato? He literally takes up a third of the tank when he’s floating in the middle.

I’m afraid that I’m going to have to buy him a bigger tank. Or flush him. But he’s pretty much too big to be flushed now and the pet store doesn’t want him back and I can’t, in good conscience, put him outside in the pond knowing that he won’t survive the winter. What’s a girl to do? (As if I didn’t have enough to worry about already.)

Last night, after an emotional conversation with Jon, I noticed that the fish who is second from the top in the above picture (the only one left, unfortunately, besides Jaws, as Big Man has come to be named) — he was lodged in the plastic plant.

What the hell, I thought, and I started crying some more, which really worried Smokey and he was trying to climb me to lick my tears off. Good boy.

I thought he (Little Fish) was dead and then realized that he wasn’t; his little fish lips were still moving.

“God dammit, Jon,” I cried in frustration. “It’s like that Chinese energy thing. One of our fish is dying now to absorb the negative energy.”

He came over and put his arms around me. I cried a little more.

Then he looked at the fish — the little one, not the potato-sized one.

“He’s missing his tail,” he said. “And a bunch of his top. The big one’s been eating him.”

“What?!” I started crying all over again.

So I ran and got the bucket, filled it with water, fishbowl salt and the drops that are supposed to dechlorinate the water. I was afraid to put him in before the 20-minute waiting period was up for fear of killing him with cold water, but I also didn’t want him to keep being lunch for the now appropriately-named Jaws.

Jon said he would take care of it.

I was grateful and went to bed.

This morning when I was leaving for work I checked on Little Fish, and he’s not doing so well. He’s missing really big chucks of him, and I’m scared that he won’t be there when I get home tonight.

But then I think, why am I crying over a fish?

And then I realize that I’m not. And that’s even harder.

So I’m breathing today and trying to honor the sanctity of what Jon’s soul is saying and what my soul is saying.

I grew up in fog, so I’m used to driving through it without fear. I knew the roads. These roads I don’t know very well, but I’m trying to implement all I have learned in the last 10 years and really, truly put it into practice.

Breathe.

Relax.

Know that you are loved.

Because at the end of the day, not a one of us is promised tomorrow, not even — or perhaps, especially — Little Fish.